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I don't believe it's an error. There is a problem and this should be tracked. Ignoring specific chipset family is a BAD idea.

And yes- if Doom 3 runs fine and it's bought only for the mod - It's a bad idea if the card is unsupported. So respectively - waste of money. I don't care for myself - I found my Doom copy for cheap, but what about the others?

I know it's still beta, anyway... but it's being released as a public beta. My FM practice shows this is a bad idea, but anyway - I tend to accept it, because it's a much bigger project than a FM campaign. Asking for testers in spite of being offered as a finished product in a public thread is better IMO.

So far I'm answering a request from the modders and providing them with screenies.

OK... First screenie I get (IMPORTANT: FAQ is already being followed and config files are OK):

So you say there are other people with Intel 946Gz Chipset which play the mod fine... Hard to believe that. My Doom 3 installation is fine. Doom 3 has been updated fine.. All darkmod files are being checked and they are ok - so the mod is correctly installed

So you say there are other people with Intel 946Gz Chipset which play the mod fine... Hard to believe that. My Doom 3 installation is fine. Doom 3 has been updated fine.. All darkmod files are being checked and they are ok - so the mod is correctly installed

If you see anything as black, except the torches, than that means you do not see compressed textures.

Either, you card does not support them - then you are out of luck without buying a new card. It won't be possible to uncompress the textures as they would not fit into your video memory. You might have luck with uncompressing, then downsizing them. Maybe it is even possible with the right settings in DoomConfig.cfg (meaning the engine does it for you, not you do the uncompress/downsize manually).

Or: your settings are accidentily so that doom does not use the compressed textures.

Here is the FAQ entry, maybe you can see if tweaking the settings will help:

And yes, posting somewhere that you need a graphic card that can do compressed textures in hardware is a good idea - I know TDM doesn't run on my laptop but so far I thought I am the only one with such a crappy graphic card. Keep in mind that even if it did support compressed textures the power of such cards is so bad that they won't be able to run the mod in a good resoluution, anyway.

1) does the mod (properly) make use of multi-core CPU's for performance boost?

2) training map loads over 10 minutes on my rig (C2D class CPU, 2GB RAM, Radeon ATI X1950 GPU /w 256MB vRAM, WinXP, latest drivers), which is disappointing. How to speed up the map loading & on what it depends (CPU raw speed, amount of RAM, GPU power, amount of GPU video RAM etc?). AFAIR, it had sth to do with "image_*Compression" variables. How they should be set (what values)?

3) I can confirm that animated skybox in training map is broken on ATI cards (Radeon X1950, Cat 9.3, WinXP).

4) game crashed for me when right clicking the pole in object room in training mission

5) what are recommended (not minimal) hardware reqs to be able to play comfortably with max graphics settings and constant 60 fps in 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions (with AA and AF on/maxed)? Better to invest in:

a) faster GPU and which one/what class (how much of vid MEM?)
b) faster CPU (how many cores?)
c) more RAM (how much should be enough?

6) my 1st impression is that the mod is mostly ok for 1st beta release, but it's still rough round the edges and need more tweaking/polishing (like movement mechanics etc)

Bulgarian Taffer: I know you've looked at the FAQ but exit Dark Mod and check you have those settings from the FAQ both in doom3/darkmod/DoomConfig.cfg and in the FM game folder, eg, doom3/training_mission/DoomConfig/cfg. See http://modetwo.net/darkmod/wiki/inde...DoomConfig.cfg for more info about the multiple configs synchronisation.

1) does the mod (properly) make use of multi-core CPU's for performance boost?

Doom3 does not use them properly, so the mod can't use them either. We hope that the source code for D3 goes open source sometime later and then we can fix that hopefully.

2) training map loads over 10 minutes on my rig (C2D class CPU, 2GB RAM, Radeon ATI X1950 GPU /w 256MB vRAM, WinXP, latest drivers), which is disappointing. How to speed up the map loading & on what it depends (CPU raw speed, amount of RAM, GPU power, amount of GPU video RAM etc?). AFAIR, it had sth to do with "image_*Compression" variables. How they should be set (what values)?

Do you have an anti-virus running in the background? Other programs like ICQ, torrents etc?

You could also experiment with the usepreload" setting and see if it helps (but it might introduce stutter)

5) what are recommended (not minimal) hardware reqs to be able to play comfortably with max graphics settings and constant 60 fps in 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 resolutions (with AA and AF on/maxed)? Better to invest in:

a) faster GPU and which one/what class (how much of vid MEM?)
b) faster CPU (how many cores?)
c) more RAM (how much should be enough?

2Gbyte memory should be enough, D3 should us between 400 and 700 Mbytes, depending on map and level. Faster CPU won't help much, a faster GPU is the way to go. 512 Mbyte vram help a lot over 256Mbyte (as it avoids costly swapping to main memory when space is tight) and more shader units help for the higher resolutions.

If you see anything as black, except the torches, than that means you do not see compressed textures.
Either, you card does not support them - then you are out of luck without buying a new card. It won't be possible to uncompress the textures as they would not fit into your video memory. You might have luck with uncompressing, then downsizing them. Maybe it is even possible with the right settings in DoomConfig.cfg (meaning the engine does it for you, not you do the uncompress/downsize manually)..

My God, this is probably what happens...

I remember black textures occured in Saint Lucia in the beginning, but I uncompressed a lot of stuff manually. And I started to see textures, but the AIs still looked transparent.

I used to get crashes near the rope section of the training map, but only when having loaded my system from sleep (S3 suspend). It did not seem to occur after a fresh reboot. This was the only time i ever crashed beta testing or otherwise.

I wonder if this might have to do with improperly setting Doom 3 itself to Ultra quality, where it is not supposed to be for proper TDM functionality. That does still matter, does it not?

If the zero-byte sized file "config.spec" is there, D3 is supposed to NOT mangle the settings.

However, if you incorrectly install TDM (by not using tdm_updater, or something) and then start it without config.spec being there, it might well happen it mangles the DoomConfig.cfg.

(It might also happen on other occurances, but I don't know. Frankly, there are a lot of things we don't know about D3, and they are undocumented and we cannot change many things as it is not open source yet. We also miss all the experts and the support force - we are a small team after all

The Dark Mod is awesome

there's a whole crapload of other applications running while I've got the game loaded, and so far it's run flawlessly. high framerate, colors are nice.

The only things I've found wrong is I've spotted a few instances of torchlight leaking through walls on the ceiling.

And a couple of times when I shoot arrows into guards they'll stop and say
"Who put this weapon here?" which I thought was hilarious, but probably not what you were aiming for(so to speak). and a few times I've shot the guards in the head and they'll just slump a bit and hang there in the air like the arrow pinned them to an invisible wall.

Other than that it looks awesome, the gameplay is incredible, I've played the training mission and chalice and outpost, and I'm about to embark on crown.

Good job guys.. Eidos Montreal is going to have a hell of a time coming up with an experience to rival this one. They'd be better off just working out the IP issues and using yours.

I might even try my hand at editing, I played with dromed a bit a long time ago, but the stuff I wanted to do really overtaxed it.

By the way there's some update. I downloaded the Outpost and installed it. The screen is pitch black, but the textures COULD BE SEEN. This is starting to get strange - for example I can see cobblestones, but it's dark, dark, dark, dark, dark... I can also see the contours of the buildings - they exist, but it's very, very dark...